While University of Missouri – Kansas City Professor Judy Ancel has yet to explain her false and misleading defense of classroom statements suggesting violence is an acceptable tactic with an appropriate place in advancing the labor movement, new video reveals Ancel giving students insight into how to put non-union companies out of business. The tactic Ancel recommends to students is based upon deception and designed to burden a non-union company with a costly labor action under false pretenses.

Ancel uses the word, “salt” in relating the tactic. In union terminology, that would supposedly be an individual who goes to work at a company with the intent to organize a union. However, that is not the goal Ancel embraces, as the video makes clear. She informs students how one can use so-called salts to put a non-union company out of business entirely.

While demonstrating no concern at all for non-union employees and business owners certain to face financial hardship as a result of the deceptive tactic Ancel endorses to her class, she calls it “useful,” going on to cackle while pointing out how the tactic is largely frowned upon by the public, a majority of which is comprised of non-union taxpayers who actually pay Ancel’s salary given her employment at a public university.

Certainly tactics union organizers use, or have used, in the past are appropriate for discussion in a class on Labor and Politics. However, one would think a genuine educational experience would come with at least some balance and objectivity and perhaps a discussion of the broader repercussions of any tactic, especially one specifically designed to destroy an individual business owner’s livelihood, while leaving some number of other taxpayers out of work.

Unfortunately, Ancel demonstrates no such thing. Consequently, it makes her class look more like a lesson in union organizing 101, as opposed to a serious and appropriate college-level educational experience related to the Labor movement in America.

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You really have to see this one to believe it:

The video above was just released by the Institute for Justice. It begins with an elderly woman lamenting:

When my son came back from Kuwait he couldn’t believe it.  He said, “Mom, what’s going on?” And I said, well they want to get rid of us and they’re finally doing it.  He was upset.  He said, “I’m sorry, I’m halfway around the world to help other people and I can’t even help my own mom keep her own home.”

For the past ten years, township officials in Mount Holly have been destroying a close-knit community called the Gardens.  They’ve been recklessly bulldozing select individual row-houses — even when they are attached to occupied homes — to make way for fancier homes for richer people.  The current owners have never been offered a place in the new redevelopment, or enough money to buy comparable home nearby.

A new Institute for Justice study, available here, shows that this redevelopment project may result in a loss of one million dollars every year, one tenth of the township’s budget.

Despite these terrible conditions, the community never gave up hope.  They continued to fight against all odds for their cherished neighborhood.   And on Wednesday, a federal court came to their defense.

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There are no coincidences in the Obama “Community Organizing” organized hard-left.

Last month in Illinois at the Right Nation event, bused-in SEIU hordes coordinated with social justice activist ministers and Obama’s vaunted Organizing for America (formerly Obama for America) waving American flags that had been distributed to them by their “Community Organizers.”  The well-trained mob chanted “Stop the Hate” and wielded uniform, hand-crafted placards defaming Glenn Beck as a “liar” and a “hater.” What we were able to discover in short order, and quite predictably, was this group was “astro-turf” and with the provocation of simple questions, such as: “What does your sign mean?”, “Why are you here?”, the “Stop the Hate” rally devolved into spitting and inflammatory name-calling.

Someone, somewhere has had a plan to dress the union thugs up as pious and deeply patriotic now that a progressive socialist is in the White House, and to frame non-progressives, non-socialists and critics of the Obama Administration as out-of-tune with Jesus’s “Social Justice” activism (history revisionism at its worst) and un-patriotic.

When I was standing outside the News Corp. building Monday evening before my appearance on “Red Eye,” I saw a lone protester who looked not-unlike Scooby-Doo’s sidekick, Shaggy.  His name is Matt Sky.  He and his girlfriend are relatively infamous for being the most photographed supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque due to their constant, ubiquitous protests in front of the Cordoba House site.

In reading about Matt Sky, ubiquitous Manhattan protester, he’s been referred to as a math tutor and web programmer.  In what type of economy does a math tutor and web programmer have this amount of free time to do so much protesting?  In another less politically correct time, a reporter would start asking him whether or not he is actually employed or whether he is another statistic of the staggering unemployment brought on by the horrendous Obama economy. (more…)

You may have read that there is strong evidence of voter fraud in Houston. Here’s what you may not have heard: the organization accused of shady behavior is linked to a former head of an Obama campaign office. She is a fan of Che Guevara. She is also the person who invited to a town hall meeting a woman who then posed as a doctor at that meeting during the health care debate.

Here are the details.

Last month, Houston’s Registrar accused a Democratic organization called “Houston Votes” of voter registration fraud. The allegations were recently detailed here, and make compelling reading:

When Catherine Engelbrecht and her friends sat down and started talking politics several years ago, they soon agreed that talking wasn’t enough. They wanted to do more. So when the 2008 election came around, “about 50” of her friends volunteered to work at Houston’s polling places.

“What we saw shocked us,” she said. “There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights.”

Their shared experience, she says, created “True the Vote,” a citizen-based grassroots organization that began collecting publicly available voting data to prove that what they saw in their day at the polls was, indeed, happening — and that it was happening everywhere.

. . . .

Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who also worked for the Service Employees International Union before coming to Houston. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid.

The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures. . . .

“The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes,” the Harris voter registrar, Leo Vasquez, charged as he passed on the documentation to the district attorney.

Guess who was active in recruiting for Houston Votes? That would be one Maria Isabel.

Does that name sound familiar? It should. She is a radical Obama supporter who ran an Obama campaign office that sported a picture of Che Guevara. (more…)

Today the Institute for Justice filed opening briefs in our fourth case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.

IJ’s first trip to the high court came in 2002 and resulted in a landmark victory for school choice.  We also won our second U.S. Supreme Court case, defending the American ideals of economic liberty and unfettered interstate commerce by striking down a ban on the direct shipment of wine.

Our third case changed America forever.  A local government in Connecticut decided to bulldoze an entire neighborhood and hand the land over to a politically connected private developer.  The law was stacked against the property owners in favor of the powerful special interests.  IJ, defending the property owners, lost in a controversial 5-4 ruling.

This was the infamous Kelo case, and it resulted in an explosion of outrage and grassroots activism all across the country.  Ed Morrissey recently wrote at Hot Air that it arguably set “the stage for the all-out eruption of Tea Party activism a few years later.” This epic battle to protect private property rights, ultimately vindicated by grassroots activists just like you, is one that will never be forgotten:

And now, as children nationwide get ready to begin a new school year, the Institute for Justice is defending Arizona’s innovative scholarship tax-credit program before the highest court in the land.

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There’s a new site to add to your blogroll:  Congress Shall Make No Law.

The site, which has the address makenolaw.org, empowers grassroots activists from around the country that are standing up and saying no to unconstitutional attacks on free speech coming in the guise of campaign finance reform.  The site explains all the latest news and events going on in this increasingly complex area of law.  All of the writers are First Amendment attorneys and experts at the Institute for Justice (IJ)—the libertarian law firm dedicated to striking down campaign finance laws in state and federal courts.

The unfortunate reality is this:  Campaign finance laws are a way to regulate speech and silence speakers.  And they have seriously negative impacts on everyday Americans.

Consider Karen Sampson of Parker North, Colorado:

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If the First Amendment protects anything, it protects the right of all Americans to speak to one another about politics without first having to register with the government.  Unfortunately, ever-increasing layers of red tape and regulation are strangling the political speech and participation of more Americans while offering little or no benefit to the public.

One of the most pernicious attacks on the basic First Amendment rights to speak, associate and petition the government are so-called grassroots lobbying laws.  (For an overview of these laws and what makes them so bad, watch this brief video:  http://ij.org/ 3368.)  But what bureaucrats and campaign finance reformers call “grassroots lobbying” is nothing more than one of the most basic acts of self-governance:  citizens discussing issues of public importance among themselves.

As many as 36 states impose heavy burdens on grassroots political activism—burdens that discourage citizens from even bothering to participate in the political process.

For example, in Washington state, if you get together with a couple of friends and create an informal group to encourage others to contact their legislators and oppose more taxes, the government forces you to register and report the name, address, business and occupation of each of the group’s organizers, as well as the names and addresses of anyone with whom the group is working to spread its message.  The state also demands to know the names and addresses of each person who contributes as little as $25 to your efforts.  After the government collects this information, it makes your personal information and political activities available to anyone with a computer and access to the Internet.

Spending $500 in one month or $1,000 in three months—a couple of trips to Kinko’s to print flyers or hosting one community barbeque—will trigger the registration and reporting requirements of the law.

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This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” April 2, 2010.

RICH LOWRY, GUEST HOST: Good evening, I’m Rich Lowry in tonight for Sean Hannity. It seems that those on the left feel that the First Amendment applies only to themselves. Members of the Tea Party movement saw that firsthand last weekend as they attempted to travel to a rally in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada.

Reid supporters lined the streets throwing eggs at the Tea Party buses as they passed by. There are even reports that some of those Reid supporters intentionally redirected buses in the wrong direction as they approach the rally.

Journalist Andrew Breitbart was there and watched it all go down. Take a look:

ANDREW BREITBART, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: They throw eggs. They’re throwing eggs. Lovely. They threw eggs, isn’t that nice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody on the bus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get them out of here or I’m going to jail today. Get him out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Out of my way.

BREITBART: What did you just say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I said I love you! In spite of what you are! You heard what I said.

BREITBART: You’re going to jail if I don’t get out of here? (more…)

And then, we drove down to DC…

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Read the full transcript and listen to the audio here.

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A famous community organizer once said, “The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules.  If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them.” Impossible demands can irritate modern leftists in ways nothing else can, whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.

~

The scenario we posed the ACORN Housing employees in Baltimore is due to the application of similar power tactics. We gave ACORN a taste of its own medicine.  ACORN was alleged to be thug-like, criminal, and nefarious.  This criminal behavior was evidenced by a video of Baltimore ACORN community organizers breaking the locks on foreclosed homes.  Instead of railing against their radicalism, it is best to bring out this type of radicalism. Hannah Giles and I took advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply–which they did without hesitation.

Additionally, instead of focusing on foreclosure itself, which has become seemingly as politicized as abortion, we focused on crimes more difficult for the left to defend: trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion. The first group represents the severely disadvantaged, the second a threat to the distribution of wealth. (more…)