Showing posts with label union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label union. Show all posts
Sunday, June 10, 2012
WEAC told it's members that Scott Walker ran on collective bargaining reforms
Screen shot from WEAC webpage.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Union activists illegally voting in Wisconsin
Original Post: Media Trackers
By Collin Roth
After discovering that Occupy Milwaukee protester and left-wing activist Austin Lee Thompson used a Glendale hotel to register and vote, Media Trackers has discovered that at least two more out-of-state activists employed by the SEIU registered to vote from the Glendale Residence Inn hotel for the April 5, 2011 spring election.
SEIU organizer Todd E. Stoner from Freehold, New Jersey, used same-day registration to cast a ballot in the April 5, 2011 spring election in Wisconsin. Stoner, like Thompson, still has an active voter registration in New Jersey. According to Stoner’s Wisconsin voter registration form, he simply listed “Residence Inn Marriott and N.J. ID” as his proof of residence. Stoner used another state’s ID as part of his proof of residence to vote in Wisconsin.
Clarence Haynes also registered to vote using the Residence Inn in Glendale. According to 2010 SEIU documents, Haynes was a “Senior Organizer in Training” in 2010. The area code on his cell phone is from the Tampa area and Haynes was previously registered as an SEIU officer in Palm Beach County. Haynes broke GAB protocol on his voter registration form by not listing a previous address and his proof of residence was a “military ID and Residence Inn paperwork.”
Austin Lee Thompson, Todd Stoner, and Clarence Haynes all travelled from different states to take part in the Madison protests and subsequent campaigns in Wisconsin. It is no coincidence that all three registered to vote at the same Residence Inn in Glendale, begging the question who was paying for the hotel rooms?
Circumstantial evidence points to the SEIU, to which all three have a connection. Stoner and Haynes are SEIU organizers and Thompson was employed by Wisconsin Jobs Now!, an organization created by the SEIU and Citizen Action Wisconsin.
How long have left-wing organizations and labor unions taken advantage of Wisconsin’s lax voting laws by registering out-of-state political activists at hotel addresses? The Milwaukee Police Department’s investigation of the 2004 General Election warned of a “new class of Wisconsin voter, the ’10-day resident,’” based on the 10 day residency requirement for voting.
Pursuing election integrity crimes must be a priority for Wisconsin law enforcement not just in word, but in deed. It is time for law enforcement, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to step up and investigate whether there is a pervasive use of hotel addresses for voter registration. How many professional activists used hotels around the state to register to vote in the Supreme Court race? or the Summer Recalls? How many will use these methods for the Walker recall?
UNCOVERED: Three Out-of-State SEIU Activists Registered To Vote From Hotel
By Collin Roth
After discovering that Occupy Milwaukee protester and left-wing activist Austin Lee Thompson used a Glendale hotel to register and vote, Media Trackers has discovered that at least two more out-of-state activists employed by the SEIU registered to vote from the Glendale Residence Inn hotel for the April 5, 2011 spring election.
SEIU organizer Todd E. Stoner from Freehold, New Jersey, used same-day registration to cast a ballot in the April 5, 2011 spring election in Wisconsin. Stoner, like Thompson, still has an active voter registration in New Jersey. According to Stoner’s Wisconsin voter registration form, he simply listed “Residence Inn Marriott and N.J. ID” as his proof of residence. Stoner used another state’s ID as part of his proof of residence to vote in Wisconsin.
Clarence Haynes also registered to vote using the Residence Inn in Glendale. According to 2010 SEIU documents, Haynes was a “Senior Organizer in Training” in 2010. The area code on his cell phone is from the Tampa area and Haynes was previously registered as an SEIU officer in Palm Beach County. Haynes broke GAB protocol on his voter registration form by not listing a previous address and his proof of residence was a “military ID and Residence Inn paperwork.”
Austin Lee Thompson, Todd Stoner, and Clarence Haynes all travelled from different states to take part in the Madison protests and subsequent campaigns in Wisconsin. It is no coincidence that all three registered to vote at the same Residence Inn in Glendale, begging the question who was paying for the hotel rooms?
Circumstantial evidence points to the SEIU, to which all three have a connection. Stoner and Haynes are SEIU organizers and Thompson was employed by Wisconsin Jobs Now!, an organization created by the SEIU and Citizen Action Wisconsin.
How long have left-wing organizations and labor unions taken advantage of Wisconsin’s lax voting laws by registering out-of-state political activists at hotel addresses? The Milwaukee Police Department’s investigation of the 2004 General Election warned of a “new class of Wisconsin voter, the ’10-day resident,’” based on the 10 day residency requirement for voting.
Pursuing election integrity crimes must be a priority for Wisconsin law enforcement not just in word, but in deed. It is time for law enforcement, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to step up and investigate whether there is a pervasive use of hotel addresses for voter registration. How many professional activists used hotels around the state to register to vote in the Supreme Court race? or the Summer Recalls? How many will use these methods for the Walker recall?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Athens in Mad Town
Original Post: WSJ
For Americans who don't think the welfare state riots of France or Greece can happen here, we recommend a look at the union and Democratic Party spectacle now unfolding in Wisconsin. Over the past few days, thousands have swarmed the state capital and airwaves to intimidate lawmakers and disrupt Governor Scott Walker's plan to level the playing field between taxpayers and government unions.
Mr. Walker's very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.
If those numbers don't sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.
Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker's office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.
None of this is deterring the crowds in Madison, aka Mad Town, where protesters, including many from the 98,000-member teachers union, have gone Greek. Madison's school district had to close Thursday when 40% of its teachers called in sick. So much for the claim that this is "all about the children." By the way, these are some of the same teachers who sued the Milwaukee school board last August to get Viagra coverage restored to their health-care plan.
The protests have an orchestrated quality, and sure enough, the Politico website reported yesterday that the Democratic Party's Organizing for America arm is helping to gin them up. The outfit is a remnant of President Obama's 2008 election campaign, so it's also no surprise that Mr. Obama said yesterday that while he knows nothing about the bill, he supports protesters occupying the Capitol building.
OpinionJournal.com columnist John Fund on the politics of the Madison protests. Also, features editor Robert Pollock explains which occupations are going away.
"These folks are teachers, and they're firefighters and they're social workers and they're police officers," he said, "and it's important not to vilify them." Mr. Obama is right that he knows nothing about the bill because it explicitly excludes police and firefighters. We'd have thought the President had enough to think about with his own $1.65 trillion deficit proposal going down with a thud in Congress, but it appears that the 2012 campaign is already underway.
The unions and their Democratic friends have also been rolling out their Hitler, Soviet Union and Hosni Mubarak analogies. "The story around the world is the rush to democracy," offered Democratic State Senator Bob Jauch. "The story in Wisconsin is the end of the democratic process."
The reality is that the unions are trying to trump the will of the voters as overwhelmingly rendered in November when they elected Mr. Walker and a new legislature. As with the strikes against pension or labor reforms that routinely shut down Paris or Athens, the goal is to create enough mayhem that Republicans and voters will give up.
While Republicans now have the votes to pass the bill, on Thursday Big Labor's Democratic allies walked out of the state senate to block a vote. Under state rules, 20 members of the 33-member senate must be present to hold a vote on an appropriations bill, leaving the 19 Republicans one member short. By the end of the day some Democrats were reported to have fled the state. So who's really trying to short-circuit democracy?
Unions are treating these reforms as Armageddon because they've owned the Wisconsin legislature for years and the changes would reduce their dominance. Under Governor Walker's proposal, the government also would no longer collect union dues from paychecks and then send that money to the unions. Instead, unions would be responsible for their own collection regimes. The bill would also require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of all members. Imagine that: More accountability inside unions.
The larger reality is that collective bargaining for government workers is not a God-given or constitutional right. It is the result of the growing union dominance inside the Democratic Party during the middle of the last century. John Kennedy only granted it to federal workers in 1962 and Jerry Brown to California workers in 1978. Other states, including Indiana and Missouri, have taken away collective bargaining rights for public employees in recent years, and some 24 states have either limited it or banned it outright.
And for good reason. Public unions have a monopoly position that gives them undue bargaining power. Their campaign cash—collected via mandatory dues—also helps to elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions. The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table. This is why such famous political friends of the working man as Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia opposed collective bargaining for government workers, even as they championed private unions.
***
The battle of Mad Town is a seminal showdown over whether government union power can be tamed, and overall government reined in. The alternative is higher taxes until the middle class is picked clean and the U.S. economy is no longer competitive. Voters said in November that they want reform, and Mr. Walker is trying to deliver. We hope Republicans hold firm, and that the people of Wisconsin understand that this battle is ultimately about their right to self-government.
For Americans who don't think the welfare state riots of France or Greece can happen here, we recommend a look at the union and Democratic Party spectacle now unfolding in Wisconsin. Over the past few days, thousands have swarmed the state capital and airwaves to intimidate lawmakers and disrupt Governor Scott Walker's plan to level the playing field between taxpayers and government unions.
Mr. Walker's very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.
If those numbers don't sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.
Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker's office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.
None of this is deterring the crowds in Madison, aka Mad Town, where protesters, including many from the 98,000-member teachers union, have gone Greek. Madison's school district had to close Thursday when 40% of its teachers called in sick. So much for the claim that this is "all about the children." By the way, these are some of the same teachers who sued the Milwaukee school board last August to get Viagra coverage restored to their health-care plan.
The protests have an orchestrated quality, and sure enough, the Politico website reported yesterday that the Democratic Party's Organizing for America arm is helping to gin them up. The outfit is a remnant of President Obama's 2008 election campaign, so it's also no surprise that Mr. Obama said yesterday that while he knows nothing about the bill, he supports protesters occupying the Capitol building.
OpinionJournal.com columnist John Fund on the politics of the Madison protests. Also, features editor Robert Pollock explains which occupations are going away.
"These folks are teachers, and they're firefighters and they're social workers and they're police officers," he said, "and it's important not to vilify them." Mr. Obama is right that he knows nothing about the bill because it explicitly excludes police and firefighters. We'd have thought the President had enough to think about with his own $1.65 trillion deficit proposal going down with a thud in Congress, but it appears that the 2012 campaign is already underway.
The unions and their Democratic friends have also been rolling out their Hitler, Soviet Union and Hosni Mubarak analogies. "The story around the world is the rush to democracy," offered Democratic State Senator Bob Jauch. "The story in Wisconsin is the end of the democratic process."
The reality is that the unions are trying to trump the will of the voters as overwhelmingly rendered in November when they elected Mr. Walker and a new legislature. As with the strikes against pension or labor reforms that routinely shut down Paris or Athens, the goal is to create enough mayhem that Republicans and voters will give up.
While Republicans now have the votes to pass the bill, on Thursday Big Labor's Democratic allies walked out of the state senate to block a vote. Under state rules, 20 members of the 33-member senate must be present to hold a vote on an appropriations bill, leaving the 19 Republicans one member short. By the end of the day some Democrats were reported to have fled the state. So who's really trying to short-circuit democracy?
Unions are treating these reforms as Armageddon because they've owned the Wisconsin legislature for years and the changes would reduce their dominance. Under Governor Walker's proposal, the government also would no longer collect union dues from paychecks and then send that money to the unions. Instead, unions would be responsible for their own collection regimes. The bill would also require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of all members. Imagine that: More accountability inside unions.
The larger reality is that collective bargaining for government workers is not a God-given or constitutional right. It is the result of the growing union dominance inside the Democratic Party during the middle of the last century. John Kennedy only granted it to federal workers in 1962 and Jerry Brown to California workers in 1978. Other states, including Indiana and Missouri, have taken away collective bargaining rights for public employees in recent years, and some 24 states have either limited it or banned it outright.
And for good reason. Public unions have a monopoly position that gives them undue bargaining power. Their campaign cash—collected via mandatory dues—also helps to elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions. The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table. This is why such famous political friends of the working man as Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia opposed collective bargaining for government workers, even as they championed private unions.
***
The battle of Mad Town is a seminal showdown over whether government union power can be tamed, and overall government reined in. The alternative is higher taxes until the middle class is picked clean and the U.S. economy is no longer competitive. Voters said in November that they want reform, and Mr. Walker is trying to deliver. We hope Republicans hold firm, and that the people of Wisconsin understand that this battle is ultimately about their right to self-government.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Names of the Doctors's who've choosen to give out fake sick notes for political purposes
NAMES OF DOCS SIGNING FAKE SICK NOTES: Dr. James H. Shropshire, Dr. Hannah M. Keevil, Dr. Bernard F. Micke, Dr. Lou Sanner. They work at UW Health
These are the doctors who are giving out sick notes to teachers who are illegally striking in Madison, Wisconsin over having to pay some toward their pension. They've been filmed diagnosing people with, "being sick with Scott Walker" and "anxiety over their pension" which would be a violation of patient confidentiality as well. Gratz doctors you deserve whatever you get.
These are the doctors who are giving out sick notes to teachers who are illegally striking in Madison, Wisconsin over having to pay some toward their pension. They've been filmed diagnosing people with, "being sick with Scott Walker" and "anxiety over their pension" which would be a violation of patient confidentiality as well. Gratz doctors you deserve whatever you get.
Lost: The common good
Original Post: Chicago Tribune
America's labor movement can claim historic victories that have served the common good. Safer workplaces. Laws to protect children from workplace exploitation. The eight-hour workday. Those who are in unions can justifiably be proud of those and other accomplishments.
But how proud are they that the children of Madison, Wis., have missed school the last two days because so many of their teachers abandoned their classrooms and joined a mass demonstration? Joined a mass demonstration to intimidate the members of the Wisconsin Legislature, who are trying to close a $3 billion deficit they face over the next two years?
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has demanded that state workers contribute roughly 5.8 percent of their wages toward their retirement. He wants them to pay for 12 percent of their health-care premiums. Those modest employee contributions would be the envy of many workers in the private sector.
Walker wants government officials to have authority to reshape public-employee benefits without collective bargaining. Walker wouldn't remove the right of unions to bargain for wages.
No, he is not seeking to eliminate unions, though you might get that impression from the heated rhetoric of the employees and even from President Barack Obama, who called this an "assault on unions."
Get tickets to Chicago Live!, a stage show brought to you by the Chicago Tribune and The Second City >>
Walker is trying to give Wisconsin a reality check. In response, public workers have interrupted the Legislature. Madison and many neighboring public schools have closed because so many teachers called in sick and left to join the protest. Democratic lawmakers disappeared on Thursday to stall a vote on the budget measures. Apparently some of them fled to … Illinois.
Public sentiment is changing. There is a growing sense that public-sector unions are not battling for better, safer workplaces. They're not battling unscrupulous employers. They're battling … the common good.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became an Internet sensation when he confronted a teacher in an argument caught on video. A recent Quinnipiac University survey in New Jersey showed that citizens overwhelmingly support layoffs and wage freezes for public employees to save the state government from fiscal disaster. The poll found 62 percent of New Jersey voters had a favorable view of teachers, but only 27 percent had a favorable view of the state's largest teachers union.
Private-sector union membership has declined over the years, while public-sector unions have thrived. One reason: In the private sector, unions and management may argue but they have a common cause. They understand that if their company cannot compete, it will fold and no one will have a job. Look what happened to the U.S. auto industry.
Governments don't operate under the constraints of market forces. They operate under political forces. Public unions play an inordinate role in the selection of management — witness the heavy union support for Gov. Pat Quinn's election last year. In Illinois, labor and management, Republicans and Democrats, have been complicit over the years in overpromising wages and benefits. In negotiations, they essentially sit on the same side of the table: Public officials who generously compensate workers tend to reap votes, contributions and campaign work from those same employees and their unions.
Many states — Illinois is not yet among them — are coming to the realization that that calculation has to undergone a wrenching change.
It might surprise the protesters in Madison to know that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt counseled against public-sector unions because "militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees." Even the late AFL-CIO President George Meany expressed reservations.
Something is happening. Something is changing. In Madison, we see public servants in mass protest to preserve a status quo that has pushed the state toward insolvency. This is not labor versus management. This is labor versus the common good.
America's labor movement can claim historic victories that have served the common good. Safer workplaces. Laws to protect children from workplace exploitation. The eight-hour workday. Those who are in unions can justifiably be proud of those and other accomplishments.
But how proud are they that the children of Madison, Wis., have missed school the last two days because so many of their teachers abandoned their classrooms and joined a mass demonstration? Joined a mass demonstration to intimidate the members of the Wisconsin Legislature, who are trying to close a $3 billion deficit they face over the next two years?
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has demanded that state workers contribute roughly 5.8 percent of their wages toward their retirement. He wants them to pay for 12 percent of their health-care premiums. Those modest employee contributions would be the envy of many workers in the private sector.
Walker wants government officials to have authority to reshape public-employee benefits without collective bargaining. Walker wouldn't remove the right of unions to bargain for wages.
No, he is not seeking to eliminate unions, though you might get that impression from the heated rhetoric of the employees and even from President Barack Obama, who called this an "assault on unions."
Get tickets to Chicago Live!, a stage show brought to you by the Chicago Tribune and The Second City >>
Walker is trying to give Wisconsin a reality check. In response, public workers have interrupted the Legislature. Madison and many neighboring public schools have closed because so many teachers called in sick and left to join the protest. Democratic lawmakers disappeared on Thursday to stall a vote on the budget measures. Apparently some of them fled to … Illinois.
Public sentiment is changing. There is a growing sense that public-sector unions are not battling for better, safer workplaces. They're not battling unscrupulous employers. They're battling … the common good.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became an Internet sensation when he confronted a teacher in an argument caught on video. A recent Quinnipiac University survey in New Jersey showed that citizens overwhelmingly support layoffs and wage freezes for public employees to save the state government from fiscal disaster. The poll found 62 percent of New Jersey voters had a favorable view of teachers, but only 27 percent had a favorable view of the state's largest teachers union.
Private-sector union membership has declined over the years, while public-sector unions have thrived. One reason: In the private sector, unions and management may argue but they have a common cause. They understand that if their company cannot compete, it will fold and no one will have a job. Look what happened to the U.S. auto industry.
Governments don't operate under the constraints of market forces. They operate under political forces. Public unions play an inordinate role in the selection of management — witness the heavy union support for Gov. Pat Quinn's election last year. In Illinois, labor and management, Republicans and Democrats, have been complicit over the years in overpromising wages and benefits. In negotiations, they essentially sit on the same side of the table: Public officials who generously compensate workers tend to reap votes, contributions and campaign work from those same employees and their unions.
Many states — Illinois is not yet among them — are coming to the realization that that calculation has to undergone a wrenching change.
It might surprise the protesters in Madison to know that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt counseled against public-sector unions because "militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees." Even the late AFL-CIO President George Meany expressed reservations.
Something is happening. Something is changing. In Madison, we see public servants in mass protest to preserve a status quo that has pushed the state toward insolvency. This is not labor versus management. This is labor versus the common good.
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