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FREEDOMFIGHTERS FOR AMERICA
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UNIONS=CORRUPTION PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND ATTORNEY GENERAL ROBERT KENNEDY HAD IT RIGHT
INVESTIGATE UNIONS.AND YOU WILL BE INVESTIGATING ORGANIZED CRIME !!!!
WE MUST TO CONTINUE NOW !!!!!
THE NEW WORLD ORDER IS MADE UP OF CORPORATE.
POLITICAL,MILITARY,CORRUPT UNION MEMBERS.AND
ORGANIZED CRIME. HENCE FORTH-EUROPEON ,NORTH AMERICAN. ASIAN PACIFIC CORRUPT UNIONS
THEY ARE THE NEW
WORLD ORDER !!!!!!!
PUBLIC ENEMY # 1
UNION CORRUPTION
(indexed by date )
www.nlcp.org/ucu.asp
TYPE LINK
UNION CORRUPTION
(indexed by union)ORGANIZED CRIME
www.ganglandnews.com/archives.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/organized_crime
MAHARASTRA CONTROL OF ORGANIZED
CRIME ACT NUMBER 30, 1999 - INDIA
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/document/actandordinances/maharashtra1999.htm
LABOR RACKETEERING
INVESTIGATORS GUIDE TO SOURCES OF INFO
R.I.C.O.
(RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT
ORGANIZATIONS)UNIONS
UNION CORRUPTION UPDATE
http://corporatemisconduct.com/unioncorruptionupdate.pdf
AFL-CIO worked for the CIA -- (1927 to 2004)The son of immigrants fromLithuania,Jay Lovestone, was a New York City College graduate who became a Communist in 1917 at age 17, and rose to head the US Communist party. He who was secretary general (top guy) of the American Communist Party from 1927 to 1929, until he was kicked out of the party (expelled) in a losing confrontation with Joseph Stalin. This was because Lovestone had demanded some independence for American communist party and argued that America was an exception because capitalism was more secure in the United States and thus socialists should pursue different, more moderate strategies there than elsewhere in the world. He then spent the next dozen years in an unsuccessful effort to form an opposition communist party.In March 1919 leading members of the Communist Party in Russia founded the Communist International (later known as Comintern). The aim of the organization was to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".To be admitted to the Comintern the Communist parties had to accept twenty-one conditions. This included: (1) conduct truly Communist propaganda and agitation and uphold the ideal of a dictatorship of the proletariat before the masses; (2) remove all reformists and supporters of centrists opinions from responsible posts; (3) create an illegal (in addition to the legal) organization for subversive work.For nearly 30 years, George Meany, a New York Irish Catholic plumber, rose to be the undisputed leader of the American labor movement, the American Federation of Labor (AFL).What brought George Meany and Lovestone together was a shared hatred of Communism and an ambitious plan to build a global network of pro-democratic unions under their control. Meany, who had a vision of establishing ties with labor federations throughout the world with the nerve center at AFL headquarters in Washington, hired Lovestone to develop his international affairs program. It was a bold, unorthodox appointment, but the few labor leaders who knew about it did not raise objections.At age 41, Lovestone found a new mission: to eliminate communists from the American labor movement. He set his sights on the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), where communists and fellow travelers were in the leadership or exercised growing influence in some 18 international unions, and he singled out the United Auto Workers (UAW), the second largest in the CIO, as his target. The local unions in the CIO were expelled by the AFL in 1935. In 1938, the CIO was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not Communists. Many CIO leaders refused to obey that requirement, which was later found unconstitutional.Lovestone had gained a foothold in the union movement through the president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union David Dubinsky, who was a hard-bitten anti-communist. He gave Lovestone a sizable slush fund to purge the UAW of leftist leaders. For two years, Lovestone served as chief of staff to UAW's first president, Homer Martin, arranging for the discharge of known leftists and replacing them with trusted Lovestone-istas from New York.In 1930 the US unemployment rate rose from 3.2 to 8.7 percent,in 1931 it rose to 15.9 percent,in 1932 it rose to 23.6 percent,in 1933 to rose to 24.9 percent.Then in 1934 unemployment falls to 21.7 percent until by 1937 it was 17.2 percent when Hitler's invasion of Poland.At the UAW convention in Milwaukee in August 1937, Lovestone tried to get rid of two leftist vice presidents and the treasurer, but he was foiled by John L. Lewis. Lewis had a working relationship with communists, who were among his best organizers and who held their jobs at his pleasure.Backed by Meany and David Dubinsky, Jay Lovestone became more influential within the labor movement. At the AFL's 1944 convention, the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) was created to assist free trade unions abroad, particularly in Europe. Lovestone was named its executive secretary (boss).Jay Lovestone named Irving Brown as the AFL's sole representative in Europe. Brown, born in Bronx, N.Y. in 1911, was a stocky, five feet nine, undistinguished in appearance and unpretentious in public. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from New York University and spent several years as a union organizer in tough campaigns, including the Ford plant in South Chicago and the coal mines of Harlan County, Kentucky.What made Brown an outstanding choice for the job was his sharp mind, inexhaustible energy, photographic memory for names of places and people, and his talent for making friends with important U.S. and foreign labor and government officials. His wife, Lillie, who spoke five European languages, served as his secretary and adviser.In connection with that work he cooperated closely with the CIA, feeding information about Communist labor-union activities to CIA boss James Angleton in order to undermine Communist influence in the international union movement and provide intelligence to the US government. Lovestone remained there until 1963 when he became director of the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department (IAD), which quietly sent millions of dollars of CIA and the shadow CIA's money to aid anti-communist activities internationally.With the end of World War II, there began intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union to win the allegiance of Greece, Turkey, Italy, West Germany and France. In these struggles, the US State Department found a willing ally in the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) and began to supply it with substantial funds and contacts.By 1946, the State Department had 22 labor attachés stationed in embassies around the world. Lovestone, using Meany's political leverage with President Truman, managed to get appointments for AFL candidates to these positions at the State Department. Meany formed alliances with senior officers in the State Department who shared his anti-Soviet convictions and who furnished him with intelligence reports.In constant communication with his network of agents in an increasing number of countries, Lovestone was able to operate in secret from an office in New York City with a few assistants, receiving reports and issuing directives, masterminding political events on a worldwide chessboard. He would make progress reports to Meany, Dubinsky and a third AFL officer, Matthew Woll. Not a word of what Lovestone was doing ever reached union members.With lavish government funding, Lovestone was able to offer enticing bribes to foreign union leaders to do his bidding. He could have them order national demonstrations and paralyzing strikes against any government that did not support American foreign policy. The Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) was able to encourage and subsidize dual, competing unions in countries where mainstream unions were considered pro-communist. The FTUC became, in effect, an arm of the State Department, enabling it to meddle in the internal affairs of foreign countries through their labor movements.Lovestone's grand mission, fully supported by Meany, Dubinsky and Woll, was to eliminate pro-communist unions everywhere, especially in countries under Soviet domination.Trade unionists from foreign countries were invited to spend as many as three months to study the American economy and democratic political system and compare them with Soviet models. They met with union leaders in various cities. They learned how US unions function and what features they could apply to their own labor movements. Lovestone was on the lookout for people whom he could manipulate in future actions in their respective countries.When they returned home, many indoctrinated foreign union leaders continued to receive a stipend from the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC). Foreign unions favored by Lovestone received printing presses, office equipment and subsidies for educational programs. Every effort was made to cultivate their loyalty to the FTUC in the event of any future controversy involving American economic and political interests.Lovestone was committed to aggressive intervention abroad and plunged into the battleground for union dominance in France, Italy and West Germany. At an Free Trade Union Committee meeting in January 1946, Lovestone endorsed a plan to give Irving Brown, his long-time associate, the sum of $100,000 to build an anti-communist bloc of delegates to disrupt the forthcoming convention of France's largest left-wing, union. For Lovestone, "France is the number one country in Europe from the point of view of saving the Western labor movement from going communist.Brown's strenuous efforts to disrupt this French union's convention failed. The communists had a four-to-one majority and enacted decisions that solidified their control. But Brown was not deterred. In early 1947, the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) sent $50,000 to Paris to help in the formation of a dual union, the Force Ouvrière, as a breakaway union. The new union was founded in December 1947 by 250 delegates at a national conference in Paris.Lovestone and Brown used the same technique that had been so successful in France: to split off a rival union from the dominant communist federation. The Italian union was the umbrella for Italian workers representing the Communist, Socialist and Christian Democrat parties. The AFL strategy was to shore up the anti-communist forces with the aim of splitting them off into a separate union.The State Department let it be known that the price of Marshall Plan aid to Italy was the removal of the communists from the government. To prevent the communists from winning the crucial April 1948 parliamentary elections, the CIA in 1947, sent $10 million for covert election campaigning. The Christian Democrats won, with 48 percent of the vote, a serious blow to the communists.In June 1948, Lovestone and Dubinsky came to Rome to promote a split from the communist union by three non-communist groups: the Catholic Christian Democrats, the Centrist Republicans and the Socialists, with promises of ample funding if they broke away. The US labor attaché Tom Lane gave the Catholic Christian Democrats $1.5 million to leave and form the Free Italian Confederation of Labor (LCGIL). On May Day 1950, Lovestone and Brown had achieved their objective: the merger of the three anti-communists unions, to be known as the Italian Federation of Trade Unions (CISL)At the end of World War II, defeated Germany was divided into four zones of Allied occupation, with the Americans with the British, French and Russians, each controlling one sector. A major question in the American zone was what steps should be taken to revive the German trade unions.The CIO supported by the US officer in charge of labor issues, Brig. Gen. Frank McSherry, decided to reorganized the German unions at the grass roots.The plan called for the election of shop stewards in each plant every three-months. At the end of two years, there would be formal recognition of new unions, based on new leaders, rather than the unions that had existed in pre-Hitler days.The AFL and Lovestone supported the idea of giving former German trade unionists an opportunity to resume their work in the trade union movement without any hindrance. The US also favor the immediate return of the properties confiscated by Hitler to the trade unionists.There was fierce infighting between partisans of each approach, with frequent appeals to Gen. Lucius Clay. By October 1945, shop stewards had been elected in 3,000 plants in the American zone. But by November, the AFL was already working with pre-war labor leaders, whose unions were functioning, although unofficially.The AFL trusted the pre-war German labor leaders because it had had friendly ties with them for many years before the start of the war. It feared that the grassroots or bottoms-up approach would lead to a Soviet takeover of the German labor movement.With AFL President George Meany using his influence with the White House, the State Department announced in March 1946 that "military government should permit proven anti-Nazis to organize primary trade unions."One month later, a meeting of German labor leaders established thirteen unions. By October 1949, the West German Labor Federation (DGB) would hold its first convention, with 16 autonomous unions representing five million members.Lovestone sent a confidential report on the achievements of the Free Trade Union Committee to Meany and Woll in November 1947 that said: "Our trade union programs have penetrated every country in Europe…The AFL has become a world force in the conflict with world Communism in every field affecting international labor."American unions and their members were kept in the dark about the AFL's covert operations in Europe, and the huge government payoffs it was getting to disrupt and weaken left-wing labor federations.In the US, Republicans had launched an anti-communist campaign against unions here at home, with the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, dubbed "the slave labor act" by CIO unions.On December 10, 1948, Matthew Woll, one of the four labor leaders on the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee, wrote CIA boss Frank Wisner: "This is to introduce Jay Lovestone… He is duly authorized to cooperate with you in behalf of our organization and to arrange for close contact and reciprocal assistance in all matters."Thus, the AFL began a relationship with the CIA that was to endure for better than two decades. Wisner recognized that the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) could be an important intelligence-gathering asset and was willing to pay a substantial price for its assistance, said to have amounted to many millions of dollars over the years.From Lovestone's perspective, the additional funding would help him expand operations in China, Japan, India, Africa and the Arab countries. While he supplied the CIA with intelligence reports from his FTUC operatives, he also received information from Wisner, who advocated "support of anti-communists in free countries."Lovestone had no trouble cooking the Free Trade Union Committee's balance sheets from the prying eyes of any dissident within the AFL. In 1949, for example, AFL-affiliated unions contributed $56,000 to the committee, but an additional $203,000 from the CIA. In 1950, the CIA funneled another $202,000 to the Free Trade Union Committee.Lovestone's very extensive, and expensive, anti-communist operations in Europe were largely financed from money siphoned off from the Marshall Plan, which provided $13 billion to Western European nations between 1948 and 1950.Under the Plan's rules, each country receiving financial aid had to refund five percent of the total to US occupation forces for administrative expenses. That turned out to be a slush fund of more than $800 million that the Free Trade Union Committee was allowed to draw from and spread lavishly to subvert European labor leaders to support whatever American policy was demanded of them.When Marshall Plan funds dried up, Lovestone became more dependent on CIA funding. But the CIA's new director, Lt. General Walter B. Smith, who had been Eisenhower's chief of staff in Europe during World War II, was a tough administrator who started questioning the expenditures for the AFL's clandestine operations.In 1944 LTG Smith became Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), again under Eisenhower. He successfully negotiated food aid for the starving Dutch civilian population in the cities in the west of the country, and opened discussions for the peaceful and complete German capitulation in Holland. In May 1945 he met with the representatives of the German High Command to negotiate the surrender of the German Armed Forces. After the surrender of Germany, SHAEF was dissolved on July 14, 1945 and was replaced by US Forces, European Theater (USFET).German surrender took place in late April and early May 1945.In the spring of 1945, the US held 3.4 million German POWs and the British held 2,150,000. About 1,000,000 German POWs remained in US camps in Germany at the beginning of 1946, but only 38,000 were still left at the beginning of 1947. From 1945 to 1948, it is estimated that 700,000 to a million men may have died incarcerated in American and French camps. Approximately 15 percent of the deaths in the US camps were from starvation or dehydration and that most deaths were caused by dysentery, pneumonia, or septicaemia, as a result of the unsanitary conditions and lack of medicine. Nearly all the records of the Rhineland death camps were destroyed.Gen. Eisenhower's staff was complicit in all the deaths and later cover up and so were all the doctors and personnel running the camps, and scores of officers and millions of soldiers who served under Eisenhower. The press failed to uncover the monstrous crime. Not a single Briton stood up to voice the truth and a whole generation of knowing Germans kept silent. Gen. George C. Marshall, who gave SHAEF much of his attention to detail, is similarly guilty. It is a virtual impossibility that Gen. Eisenhower could have executed an extermination policy on his own and a near absolute impossibility that Gen. Marshall would not have noticed it.In November 1945, LTG Smith was appointed as the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union. During his tenure the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated as the Cold War set in. Smith became thoroughly disillusioned and turned into a hardened cold warrior who saw the Soviet Union as a secretive, totalitarian and antagonistic state. In his book, My Three Years in Moscow (1950), Smith's account of his time as ambassador, he wrote:... we are forced into a continuing struggle for a free way of life that may extend over a period of many years. We dare not allow ourselves any false sense of security. We must anticipate that the Soviet tactic will be to wear us down, to exasperate us, and to keep probing for weak spots, and we must cultivate firmness and patience to a degree we have never before required.Smith returned to the United States in March 1949.To clarify the relationship, a meeting was held on November 24, 1950. In attendance for the AFL were Meany, Dubinsky, Woll and Lovestone. The CIA was represented by Smith, its director, and his top assistant, Frank Wisner.There was general agreement that the collaboration had worked well and should continue. But Lovestone, while complimenting the CIA for the assistance it had given the AFL in several emergency situations, still insisted that improvements had to be made in the relationship. He had given the CIA a list of the funding he required for special projects, but it had been ignored. Smith said he would review the proposals.When Smith brought up the idea of including the CIO into the agency's operations, the AFL group quickly voiced their strong objections. They said he CIO was inexperienced in this kind of activity and was riddled with communists and other undesirable elements. Lovestone said that if the CIO were brought in, all their work would be placed in jeopardy. The CIO could not be trusted to maintain the secrecy that was required by both the AFL and CIA operations.Meany said he was worried that the CIO would get some of its friends in the Truman administration to recommend that they share equally in funding and participation in international labor activity. (Just a few months earlier, the CIO had expelled eleven international unions with over one million members for "following the Communist Party line.") Meany threatened to withdraw from the arrangement with the CIA if the CIO were brought into the partnership.But to LTG. Smith and Wisner, it seemed absurd to work closely with one wing of the labor movement while totally ignoring the other. The best that the AFL guests could get out of them was that enlisting the cooperation of the CIO was not imminent.The propriety of an American labor movement becoming the instrument or partner of a government intelligence agency was fully acceptable to the Meany-Dubinsky-Woll trio, as long as it was in the service of an anti-Soviet crusade and the defeat of communist-led unions. Nor did any US union leader dare challenge the clandestine, quid pro quo relationship between organized labor and the CIA.It was Thomas Braden, an assistant to CIA director Allan Dulles, who became the contact man with the CIO. Walter Reuther, the UAW president, received $50,000 in cash from Braden, who flew to Detroit to deliver it.There are no public records of how much money the CIA gave both branches of the labor movement. There was no congressional oversight of the agency. As Braden said: "The CIA could do exactly as it pleased. It could buy armies. It could buy bombs. It was one of the first world-wide multinationals."Arriving in Paris in October 1945, Irving Brown made private deals with European labor leader. In 1947 to 1948 when necessary, he hired squads of goons, many of them criminals, to wrest control of the docks at Marseilles and other southern ports from the communist port unions, thus enabling allied ships to deliver food, machinery and other items in short supply to France and Italy.Without the huge sums of money, Brown could not have effectively challenged the communist-led unions which he continuously received to bribe foreign union leaders, organize demonstrations, call or break strikes, influence union elections and disrupt communist meetings.Between 1945 and 1948, Brown was getting funds from the AFL treasury, the US State Department and major corporations like Exxon, General Electric, Singer Sewing Machines and others that had commercial interests in Europe (and/or the shadow CIA's Black Eagle Fund). Then, in 1948, the US launched the Marshall Plan, which allotted $13 billion to Western Europe.The Marshall Plan stipulated that 5 percent ($650 million) of the funds should be used for administrative purposes and rebuilding Western European unions. But since Irving had developed a cozy relationship with Averill Harriman, the Marshall Plan director, he was able to get a good slice of the $800 million available in the "sugar fund" to finance his expanding activities.When the Marshall Plan folded in 1950, the CIA was there to continue funding Brown's secret operations on an even grander scale. The CIA turned over tens of millions to the Free Trade Union Committee, because the spy agency found Brown's covert operations useful. Neither the CIA nor the Free Trade Union Committee were obliged to report these undercover financial transactions.In September 1945, delegates from the labor federations of 56 counties met in Paris to form the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Among its affiliates were the CIO, the United Mine Workers, the U.S. railroad unions, the British Trade Union Congress and most of the functioning unions in Europe, Asia and Africa.The one glaring exception was the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Meany, refusing to join the WFTU, said its affiliates lacked "the basic freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion." The WFTU, he said, was "primarily part of a struggle to secure world political power for the Communists in the postwar world."The AFL began a strong campaign to undermine the World Federation of Trade Unions and establish a rival world labor federation under its influence, if not direct control. Brown used his anti-communist contacts within the WFTU to sharpen divisions over the Marshall Plan and NATO, with the pro-Soviet unions refusing to endorse both. The crisis over the Berlin Blockade and Russian expansionist moves in Czechoslovakia also helped Brown to cause defections within the World Federation of Trade Unions .By December 1949, delegates from organized labor in 53 countries, including the British Trades Union Congress and the CIO, met in London to form the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Meany had achieved his dream, but not with the CIA providing the funds and covert assistance.But the fledgling ICFTU wasn't the compliant vehicle that Meany had expected to promote his ambitions. Many of its members came from countries that were hostile to each other: Arabs and Israelis, Greeks and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis. There were tensions between unions representing the industrially-developed countries and those from Third World countries. Others had developed ties with communist unions in Eastern Europe that American labor leaders frowned upon. And most began to resent the domineering attitude of the US labor delegation.The World Federation of Trade Unions staff in Brussels, Irving Brown, with Meany's approval, began moving aggressively on projects involving union development in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This further infuriated the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) leadership who, depending on consensus, rarely acted decisively.For nearly two decades, the uneasy, fragile relationship between the AFL and the held on until 1969, when Meany, over the objections of Lovestone and Brown, pulled out of the world labor organization, saying he felt "completely frustrated with the operations of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and no longer saw any justification to remain within it."What also angered Meany was the growing trend within ICFTU affiliates to establish working relations with unions in Eastern Europe, especially the Soviet Union, through exchanges of worker delegations, joint meetings and actions of international solidarity.The ICFTU received ample funding from the CIA, channeled to it via both the AFL and CIO. In the early 1950s West German trade unions were given CIA money through Walter Reuther, the head of the CIO United Auto Workers and his brother, Victor." (Source: Inside the Company, CIA Diary by Philip Agee, a former CIA officer)In March 1947, President Truman, addressing a joint session of Congress, said that action had to be taken to thwart the communist guerrillas who were on the verge of taking over the Greek government. He asked for $300 million for Greece and $100 million for Turkey, declaring: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."In this crisis, Brown felt he could be of special value to the United States by organizing and unifying the Greek non-communist unions. It was a difficult assignment, because the principal force among the workers were the Greek communist guerrillas, who had fought the Nazi-Italian occupation, as well as their homegrown fascists.The communists were capitalizing on the widespread poverty, where average wages did not cover more than one fourth of the necessities of life. After April 1947, considerable US economic assistance began to flow into Greece, somewhat relieving the plight of the population.)Brown helped to unite the non-communist unions on a program "to organize a national trade union movement free of government control and political party domination."He also got them to agree to "seek the assistance and supervision of the AFL and the British Trade Union Congress in order to guarantee to the free trade union forces their democratic rights in the election of officers and the rebuilding of their trade union organizations."Congress voted the money — eventually close to $700 million — and after prolonged fighting, the Greek guerrillas were beaten, the Greek government and economy were reformed and the situation in the Mediterranean was stabilized.A year before he died in 1988, Irving Brown was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.In 1955, George Meany effectively used his anti-communist ideology after the merger of the AFL and CIO. By this time, most militant, left-wing leaders had been expelled from the CIO, so his task was considerably easier.Meany never identified any fascists in the labor movement. His target was not only communists, but also anyone who criticized him. His critics were either punished or disregarded. He did not consider himself accountable to the15,913,077 union members. For 27 years George Meany lead the AFL-CIO.THE EVIL EMPIRE
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.rense.com/general88/evil.htm
Modern day union is often little more than governments and their union
supporters bleeding the public dry in order to subsidize a political party
and a union leadership that brings in the votes for that party
Who Will Protect the People from the Unions?
By Daniel Greenfield Sunday, January 2, 2011
It is often forgotten that one of the causes of the evolution of the modern
American urban union was the lawless suppression of workers by Democratic
party affiliated political machines, and yet it did not take so very long
before the union became an outgrowth of that same political machine. And
having wiped out nearly every independent industry with which it was
associated, the only unions still surviving are those in control of either
municipal services or state subsidized service providers, particularly in
the medical field.
If the union began as a way to negotiate salaries and working conditions
between employers and workers, the modern day union is often little more
than governments and their union supporters bleeding the public dry in order
to subsidize a political party and a union leadership that brings in the
votes for that party. The situation is most critical in California, but many
state and city budgets are almost as badly strained by the combination of
municipal union contracts and the subsidized services that they are
associated with.
Lethal work slowdown by union members in New York City during the blizzard
The recent lethal work slowdown
<http://patterico.com/2010/12/30/if-true-how-is-this-not-criminally-negligen
t-homicide/> by union members in New York City during the blizzard or the
multimillion dollar media blitzes by California unions for Jerry Brown and
New Jersey teacher's unions against Chris Christie is a harsh reminder of
the utter greed and ruthlessness of the union's last stand, their death grip
on public services fed by taxpayer money. These stands have little to do
with worker's rights. They have next to nothing in common with the old union
image of underpaid workers protesting outside of factories. It's still about
exploitation, but it's about the exploitation of the public by a
union-government political establishment.
As the bosses of old have given way to managers and then to politicians, the
union bosses are the only bosses still in the game, who enjoy wealth and
power far beyond those of the average taxpayer being fleeced without his or
her consent. Union rhetoric may pretend that they are contending with mayors
and governors, but in reality it's the public that they're really contending
with. Their strikes have hardly any effect on the politicians, but target
the public. And the money that they're paid with is the public's money. The
New Jersey's teachers union real target was New Jersey homeowners who
already pay the highest property taxes in the country. But when given a
choice, homeowners across New Jersey said no to paying more property taxes
into the union's pockets. And Governor Christie won so much acclaim, because
he called the union on what it was doing and insisted that the voters should
have a choice. But much of the time politicians are more than happy to give
in.
Union negotiations with politicians that they help elect are a corrupt
farce, because the money extracted from the public goes in part to the same
politicians who decide whether to accept or reject their offer. In any law
abiding system, this would be a tremendous conflict of interest, like
sending in your bank's loan officer to act as your real estate broker. But
under our current system it is actually commonplace for unions which live
off contracts with politicians, to be able to fund and work to elect those
same politicians. And it represents a level of corruption that makes the
Pentagon's 100 dollar screws or the corporate tax shelters that liberal
pundits complain about seem almost petty. And now entire states are
collapsing under the weight of dirty contracts with unions that act like a
Praetorian Guard, elevating and removing governors and mayors who displease
them.
Governor Schwarzenegger went in as a reformer, but after losing a battle
with California nurses unions turned into a Yes Man for Sacramento. His
replacement, Governor Jerry Brown was elected with millions of dollars of
union money
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/09/independent-gro
ups-keep-spending-for-jerry-brown.html> . The California media has made much
of how much Meg Whitman spent on her campaign, but Jerry Brown didn't have
to spend much money on his campaign. The unions were out there doing it for
him, with money extracted from a state budget in freefall. This arrangement
under which a new governor, who has never held any job that was not on the
public dole, got elected thanks to an arrangement with unions who live off
the public dole.
Corrupt collusion between union bosses and politicians, exchanging public
money for political support
If this was corrupt collusion between businesses and union bosses, as has
often been the case with some unions such as SEIU, then the only victims
would be union members. But this is corrupt collusion between union bosses
and politicians, exchanging public money for political support. And not
letting go even when the public is bleeding red and there's literally no
more money to give.
It means that unions get paid, while state tax refunds to
<http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=6636740> the public
are delayed. Because the unions are always at the head of the line. When
Governor Schwarzenegger tried to temporarily cut worker pay, State
Controller John Chiang refused to comply
<http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/02/schwarzenegger-cuts-california-stat
e-workers-pay-to-minimum-wag/> . Chiang was also the man who decided that
working families could wait for their tax refunds. And it's no wonder
because John Chiang, the man with hands on the purse, was also elected by
the same unions he
<http://www.flashreport.org/commentary0b.php?postID=2009012212040576&authID=
2005081622025042&post_offsetP=0> 's pandering to. California unions spent
millions to put Chiang in place and more to keep reelecting him.
How long can the system go on before it breaks down? That doesn't really
matter. Because the man at the top in Washington D.C. also got there through
union backing. And ObamaCare exempts unions, but forces ordinary Americans
to buy into a health care system whose contracts are negotiated to benefit
unions. It's a safe bet that Barack Obama won't let Jerry Brown, John Chiang
and their unions go under. Because his own reelection campaign depends on
it. Money sent to California unions, is also money sent to the Campaign to
Reelect Barack Obama. But it's also a safe bet that the California taxpayers
won't just be the only ones hit with the bill. California may default on its
debts, state bonds may prove worthless and the federal government may go on
covering whatever entitlements funding is needed, but sooner or later the
system will still break down. It will just be a national system, rather than
a state one.
Political machines have robbed states and cities blind before, but in the
19th century they did not have access to a massive federal budget on this
scale. Even President Martin Van Buren, a Tammany Hall man, could not
command the kind of wealth and credit that Barack Obama does. President
Buchanan might have helped cover up a murder by Congressman Sickles, one of
his Tammany Hall favorites, who had been engaged in blatant corruption using
government money, but even accounting for inflation, he could have never
overseen a fraud and theft of this magnitude. The Pigford
<http://biggovernment.com/lstranahan/2010/12/19/pigford-video-blockbuster-ke
y-black-farmers-lawyer-admits-clients-got-away-with-murder/> settlement
alone makes Tammany Hall's worst crimes seem like small change, and yet it's
far from the most notable misuse of money by this congress or
administration.
Politicians and bureaucrats could and did steal, but there was a limit and
scope to their theft. Those who stole too much would usually be brought down
before they caused too much damage, and drove an outraged public to cut off
the pipeline. Tammany Hall's leadership was repeatedly purged in just that
fashion. But while the current union system is essentially a legal version
of the old Tammany Hall system, in which municipal employees were obligated
to pay "the ring" for their jobs, it has no more limits. Not even the
bankruptcy of the system that it feeds off.
When the union is isolated enough and the public is desperately trying to
make ends meet, then the unions may lose. That's what happened with the
teacher's union in New Jersey. But when the unions are big enough and feed
off a huge membership that knows it has no choice but to vote union, and the
unions are closely tied up with an entitlements dependent electorate, then
the system may be irreparable. And that is what happened in California. You
can't fix a system like that, not without taking on millions of people who
are robbing it blind. And that's not an election, it's a civil war.
In his own time as governor of New York and police commissioner of New York
City, Theodore Roosevelt could not succeed in cleaning it up. And his many
times removed cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned New York City's
corruption into a national standard with the New Deal. Together with Tammany
Hall's New York Senator Wagner, their National Labor Relations Act turned to
compulsory unionization as a means of forcing workers into supporting the
Democratic party, whether they wanted to or not. And by doing so, Wagner and
FDR began the process of reclaiming the unions from the Communist party and
organized crime, and integrating them into the nationwide structure of the
Democratic party.
FDR and Wagner were both New York politicians with a ground floor view on
how its dirty politics worked. And the NLRB was not about worker
representation, but about money and political power. It favored large unions
with political affiliations, destroying small unions, and taking a
Northeastern urban alliance between the political machine and the union
bosses as its model. The workers were no longer being beaten by goons hired
by their employers and the political machine's police. Now they were being
beaten by goons hired by the union bosses and the political machine's
police. Organized crime had always worked both sides of the aisle, playing
for the highest bidder. The NLRB showed organized crime that unions were the
future and industry was the past. But the politicians were ahead of them.
The union became a parasite and union jobs either went south or were
outsourced. But the public sector union remained a tick fixed on the
bloodstream of the public. You didn't have to be a factory owned to be
drained by them. You didn't need to own a single share of stock. All you had
to do was live and pay taxes in an area where public sector unions had
gripped in their claws. The intersection of entitlements and public sector
unions and political machines meant that money was being exchanged for
political support, and the people outraged were not the ones that
politicians cared about. They still made a show of driving a hard bargain,
but more often they showed up at union conferences to loud cheers. Their old
electorate paid taxes. Their new electorate gobbled them.
And that brings us back to 2011 where the oppressed worker is now the
taxpayer, whose income and future are being garnished by unions. The poor
man standing out in the rain is not the union employee, but the man waiting
to collect another check, that will be torn apart and consumed by union
bosses and politicians. Who will then protect those workers-the people, from
the unions?
FREEDOMFIGHTERS FOR AMERICA
CT 06877
United States