Public Sector Unions Are Very Different From Private Sector Unions

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner A strike in Chicago and New York City; rallies of tens of thousands in Wisconsin; politician walkouts in Indiana; attempts to change the constitution in Michigan — these events and more featured government unions and their leaders at the forefront of the recent battles over public policy.

As a recessed economy dragged down state expenditures, governors and legislatures increasingly looked to trim from the fattest part of government: Public-sector employees. Salaries and pensions that saw government workers being compensated far more generously than their private-sector counterparts were finally beginning to be addressed.

While it would be easy to classify this battle as between those who are “pro-union” or “anti-union,” a distinction should be made between unions in the private-sector versus the public-sector counterpart. Historically and in modern-day practice, these are two very different things.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, private-sector unions are allowed to extract dues and fees from workers if the employer is a unionized workplace. The NLRA, passed in 1935 during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, does not, however, apply to public-sector employees, including state and federal workers, because the thinking was that this would over-politicize government and cause a conflict of interest between unions and politicians.

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Sen. Rand Paul: My Filibuster Was Just The Beginning

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Rand Paul, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Kentucky.

If I had planned to speak for 13 hours when I took the Senate floor Wednesday, I would’ve worn more comfortable shoes. I started my filibuster with the words, “I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA. I will speak until I can no longer speak” — and I meant it.

I wanted to sound an alarm bell from coast to coast. I wanted everybody to know that our Constitution is precious and that no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime. As Americans, we have fought long and hard for the Bill of Rights. The idea that no person shall be held without due process, and that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted, is a founding American principle and a basic right.

My official starting time was 11:47 a.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 2013.

I had a large binder of materials to help me get through my points, but although I sometimes read an op-ed or prepared remarks in between my thoughts, most of my filibuster was off the top of my head and straight from my heart. From 1 to 2 p.m., I barely looked at my notes. I wanted to make sure that I touched every point and fully explained why I was demanding more information from the White House.

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The Power of One Man’s Conviction

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photo credit: rand paul for us senate 2010What was it about Rand Paul’s filibuster that has captivated conservatives all over the country and reinvigorated their desire to fight for our Constitutional Republic? The irony is that the drone issue was not even one of the most popular issues among many conservatives until last night. I suspect that many conservatives don’t necessarily agree with some of Paul’s assertions about targeting terrorists like Al-Awlaki overseas, although we are all (everyone except for McCain and Graham) concerned about targeting Americans on American soil. Yet he has become an overnight sensation, not just among his core libertarian base, but among the broad conservative movement.

Conservatives have been starving for a fighter; longing for someone who will do something drastic, engage in a media savvy fight against an imperialistic president who has no respect for checks and balances and an invidious disregard for the separation of powers.

We have witnessed this president shred the Constitution and implement his radical agenda by administrative fiat. We the People stand by flummoxed and frustrated at the lack of courage among Republicans to counter the president with anything more magnanimous than a press release. We have seen him abrogate our immigration laws, grant administrative amnesty, and let criminal aliens out of jail. Yet nobody has used their position and identified a point of leverage at which to take a stand and draw extended scrutiny to the issue or any other breach of authority.

Finally, when administration officials began asserting that the president might even have the power to launch drone strikes on American soil, Senator Paul decided he would hold up a major nomination to command the attention of the entire country. Many of us sat back and watched the impassioned speeches from Paul and the stirring words of Ted Cruz. We wondered why we had not witnessed this sort of spirited opposition during Obamacare.

Yet that is exactly the point. Most of these senators are new to Washington. They have charted a new path forward, one that is not paved with backroom deals but with forthright demonstrations of courage and commitment to the principles that buoyed them into office. Instead of cutting a deal to invoke cloture and having Brennan’s nomination sail to confirmation, Paul has united a fractious Republican Party against this – that is everyone except for Obama’s dinner companion Lindsey Graham.

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Obamacare Requirements Will Drive Up Premiums

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner In 2007, candidate Barack Obama declared, “I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.” As president, he signed national health care legislation that is formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But according to a new report from Congressional Republicans, the law will actually cause premiums to more than double for some Americans.

The report, which is based on a compilation of independent studies on the effect of the law’s new regulations, finds that Obamacare could increase premiums by 40 percent on average and by as much as 202 percent for young adults living in Chicago.

There are several ways the health care law puts upward pressure on premiums. It requires insurers to offer coverage to everybody who applies, regardless of pre-existing conditions. It limits the amount that companies can adjust prices based on health status. It also requires that every American purchase a health insurance policy that meets federal specifications regarding the level of benefits covered. In addition, the law imposes $165 billion of tax increases on health insurance, drug manufacturers and medical device-makers. These policies work together to drive up the cost of insurance, especially on younger and healthier Americans.

It’s true that the law also offers subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance. But those subsidies are phased out for individuals earning more than $46,000. The report anticipates, “Even after receiving subsidies, Americans earning as little as $25,000 will still pay more.”

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Getting Wise To Government Lies

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Photo Credit: Andrew BirajTake President Obama and his Cabinet of Liars, please. We all know what dirty tricks they played to try and stop the sequester’s automatic budget cuts from happening.

They spent weeks trying to frighten the America people into believing the country would collapse into chaos and suffering if the federal government’s sequester-forced spending cuts went into effect. The campaigner in chief and his chorus of toadies did everything they could to make sure the puny spending cuts — which would have merely taken the federal budget back to its 2012 level — would cause the most pain to the most people.

Supposedly the cuts were going to decimate the ranks of our local police forces and firefighters, throw hundreds of teachers into the streets, create long lines at airports and maybe even leave the United States vulnerable to a military invasion by Greece.

Of course, most of Big Media played right along with Obama’s dirty political game. Like the dupes they are, they publicized every sequester scare-story like it was going to mean the end of America as we know it.

(Too bad the MSN don’t devote the same level of hysteria to covering some of our real problems, like Obama’s runaway federal spending and our unpayable future debt load.)

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The Benghazi Stonewall Cracks Again, As Clue To The “Talking Point” Vandals Emerge

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Photo Credit: Human EventsShazam! The night before Rand Paul’s filibuster of CIA director nominee John Brennan got under way, and days after the unlovely conclusion of the Chuck Hagel Defense Secretary drama, the Obama Administration suddenly decided to cough up some of the documents congressional investigators (and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News) have been trying to see for five months. Attkisson took a look through these “voluminous” documents and found some interesting stuff:

Documents provided include emails regarding “who changed the Benghazi talking points” and many communications between officials in Libya and Washington, D.C., leading up to and during the attack.

Regarding the talking points: one source who reviewed the documents said removal of the word “al Qaeda” from the talking points was initiated, at least in part, by one of the “press shops.” The source said press officers from the Defense Intelligence agency, the White House and the FBI were “looped in” from the start and that some of them expressed concerns in writing that the media would ask follow up questions if certain words or phrases were used. The source added that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell were included in these emails.

When asked whether Clapper and Morell misled Congress when they didn’t disclose who changed the talking points (because they knew), one source said “the exact right question wasn’t asked.”

Wonderful. These incompetent clowns think this is some kind of party game. You don’t have to say anything that would jeopardize Obama’s re-election unless the exact right questions are asked, probably in iambic pentameter.

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Roger Ailes Nails Joe Biden-“He’s As Dumb As An Ashtray”

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Photo Credit: Irish Central In Zev Chafets’ new book, “Roger Ailes: Off Camera,” excerpts are released on the Vanity Fair website, Ailes is an equal opportunity detractor of Washington leadership, not only comparing Joe Bidens self described vaunted “genius” as being equal to that of an ashtray, he also has a scathing evaluation of President Obama.

Ailes, in response to organized attacks by Obama supporters on Anne Romney criticizing her for not having to work: “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life.

“He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fundraisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that. … I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.”

But Ailes also had harsh words for Newt Gingrich calling him a “p***k.”

“He’s a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner,”

Ailes doesn’t hold back and it’s about time others in his position did the same. It’s time to recognize the herd of effete pseudo intellectual elephants who have grabbed hold of power in Washington.

Ailes comments on Biden, come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to his antics for the several decades he has been in the Senate and now in the Whitehouse.

Biden has utter disregard for the truth and showed that when he proclaimed during his speech at the Democrat convention in 2012: “Osama Bin Laden is dead and the GM Volt is alive”…Inferring to us that he and Obama had tamed the terrorism situation by taking out Bin Laden AND their marketing genius had made the Chevy Volt a huge success. See Hey Joe Biden! The Volt is dead and Al Quaeda is alive!

But around the time Biden was stretching the bounds of credulity in front of crowds at the 2012 Democrat National Convention, 21 of our embassies and consulates in the Mideast and North Africa were attacked by Islamic mobs, resulting in deaths of our personnel.

Same thing for the GM Volt. Mr. Biden knew sales of the Volt were horrible and as a matter of fact manufacture of them had been stopped due to poor sales.

But facts have never got in the way of Mr. Biden over the years, he has gotten a free pass from the press. If Mr. Biden was a member of the republican party, he would have long ago been tarred and feathered for his prevarications and run out of town on a rail.

Perhaps Mr. Biden is thought of as an intellectual giant among his electorate, we know he thinks he is. But those of us, who have actually paid attention to what he has said over the years, have a much different opinion and Roger Ailes aptly describes it.

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DHS Buying Armored Vehicles

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteySecurity: In addition to stockpiling over a billion bullets and thousands of semiautomatic weapons the feds would deny U.S. citizens, the vehicle of choice for fighting the counterinsurgency war in Iraq is appearing on U.S. streets.

The sequestration question du jour is why the Department of Homeland Security, busy releasing hundreds, if not thousands, of deportable and detained illegal aliens due to budget constraints, is buying several thousand Mine Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles?

And just who are they intended to be used against? This acquisition comes on top of the recent news of the stockpiling by DHS of more than 1.6 billion (with a ‘b’) bullets of various calibers, enough by one calculation to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq War, and the ordering of some 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) — also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians.

Additionally, DHS is asking for 30 round magazines that “have a capacity to hold thirty (30) 5.56x45mm NATO rounds.”
The Department of Homeland Security (through the U.S. Army Forces Command) recently retrofitted 2,717 of these MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the U.S. They were formerly used for counterinsurgency in Iraq.

These vehicles are specifically designed to resist mines and ambush attacks. They use bulletproof windows and are designed to withstand small-arms fire, including smaller-caliber rifles such as a .223 Remington. Does DHS expect a counterinsurgency here?

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Make Them Pay

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Photo Credit: American Thinker The media threat to our democracy is a clear and present danger to our nation’s future. This is more than merely “A Slobbering Love Affair,” as described by Jonah Goldberg in his book subtitled: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. No. The blind and rabid media support and political activism for their de-facto socialist party and president is the most significant contributor to our social destruction.

The World as it Should Be

In her speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention Michelle parroted a recurring Obama theme, “All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.”

This Saul Alinsky sentiment pervades leftist thinking. The World as it Should Be is the prime motivator for the socialist movement. Forward! To Utopia! When candidate Barack Hussein Obama shouted to his ecstatic followers, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America!” this is what he meant. Everyone must conform to the requirements of the socialist state in order to make The World as it Should Be.

The progressive left has a vision for how America should be and they are using their considerable media power to lull and compel us into accepting their collectivist ideology. The media are actively defining and disseminating our culture, pulling us hard to the left, and it’s working for them.

The Media Attack on Christianity:
Not content with their assault on the American socioeconomic system and culture, the progressives are warring against Jesus Christ. This has reached an intolerable level, even in a secular nation that believes strongly in First Amendment principles of free speech and freedom of religion.

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Stossel: The Sequester Is Not Even A Cut

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Photo Credit: Human EventsIf you’re reading this, you’ve survived the “sequester” cuts!

That may surprise you, since President Obama likened the sequester to taking a “meat cleaver” to government, causing FBI agents to be furloughed, prosecutors to let criminals escape and medical research to grind to a halt!

The media hyped it, too. The NBC Nightly News said, “The sequester could cripple air travel, force firefighter layoffs — even kick preschoolers out of child care!” The truth is that the terrifying sequester cuts weren’t even cuts. They were merely a small reduction in government’s planned increase in spending. A very small reduction.

After a decade, the federal government will simply spend about $4.6 trillion a year instead of $4.5 trillion (in 2012 dollars).

And still members of Congress, Republicans included, look for ways to delay the cuts, like spreading them out over 10 years instead of making any now. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked, “If we cannot do this little bit … how are we ever going to balance the budget?” Actually, we don’t even need to balance the budget. If we just slowed the growth of government to 1 or 2 percent a year, we could grow our way out of unsustainable debt.

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