For those who hunger to hold their elected officials accountable for perpetuating a culture of reckless runaway spending in Washington, meet YouCut.

This first-of-its-kind interactive initiative empowers taxpayers with direct democracy at a time when their faith in Congress’ fiscal prudence has reached its lowest. YouCut allows the public to vote each week on one of five wasteful spending items that they would like to strip from the federal budget. Once the votes are tallied, Republicans force a vote on whether or not to take up and debate the cut on the House floor.

During the first week, a plurality of voters – over 81,000! – chose to axe a recently created $2.5 billion annual welfare program that undercuts cost-saving welfare reforms made in the mid 1990’s.  Within 5 days of the experiment, 280,000 Americans have cast a vote either online or by text message.  At several points, more than 5,000 votes were being cast per hour, with less than one percent of votes originating from inside the beltway.

The overwhelming response speaks to the extreme levels of frustration that you feel toward a Congress that refuses to listen to you.  Over the last decade, taxpayers have grown weary of the incessant federal spending binges – no matter which party has been in power. They now look across the Atlantic with horror as Europe collapses under the weight of its own debt. Fear that America will go down the same road has only amplified calls for spending restraint.

Through YouCut, concerned citizens are cracking through the wall of resistance put up by big spenders in Washington to create a new culture of savings. This poses a threat to several in Congress who are invested heavily in preserving the status quo – hence the Democratic National Committee’s vigorous effort to discredit the program.  Worse, rather than listening to the hundreds of thousands of Americans, Tim Kaine (Chairman of the DNC) and Chris Van Hollen (Chairman of the DCCC) chose to mock the opinions of those who voted.  Not listening – a common theme for Democrats.

Driven by a new generation of young and energetic leaders, today’s GOP understands that we were fired from the majority because we abandoned the fiscal principles we had been sent to Washington to uphold. After two terms in the minority, we are eager to restore our reputation as responsible custodians of taxpayer money. It is this commitment to eliminate the prevailing wink-and-a-nod approach to unnecessary spending that spawned YouCut.

This week citizens can choose among the following items:

1. Byrd Honors Scholarships ($42 million in savings in the first year -$420 million over ten years) Even the Obama Administration proposed terminating this program in their annual budget.  Surely Congress can too.
2. Eliminate the Proposed Federal Employee Pay Raise (saves approximately $2 billion in the first year, $30 billion over ten years).  President Obama proposed providing federal civilian employees with a 1.4% pay raise next year. This year Federal employees received a 2% raise and since the year 2000 have received raises averaging 3.6% a year. USA Today recently reported that the typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private-sector worker in the same occupation. This proposal would expand upon the just enacted legislation to prevent Members of Congress from receiving a pay raise and would not impact the scheduled pay raise for those serving in the military.
3. Suspend Federal Land Purchases ($266 million in savings in the first year, $2.66 billion over ten years).  Last year Congress spent $266 million acquiring additional federal lands at the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, a 138% increase over the comparable amount of funding just four years ago. Given that the federal government already owns 29% of the land in America and has a multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog to maintain current land holdings, suspending new federal land would permit the government to focus on maintaining existing property while also saving taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
4. Terminate Funding for UNESCO ($81 million in savings in the first year, $810 million over ten years).  Last year the administration proposed deleting the Department of Education’s attaché to UNESCO saving approximately $632,000 a year. Terminating U.S. support for UNESCO entirely would save taxpayers $81 million annually. The U.S. had not supported UNESCO for 19 years prior to the decision by the Bush Administration to rejoin in 2003. UNESCO routinely undertakes activities that are properly the responsibility of individual countries and their governments, including reviewing and making recommendations in areas related to education, arts, culture, ethics, science and technology, and historic preservation. UNESCO recently came under fire for their proposed International Guidelines for Sexuality Education.  Membership provides little benefit to American taxpayers in light of the overall cost.
5. Eliminate Mohair Subsidies (approximately $1 million in savings in the first year, $10 million over ten years).  Federal price support for mohair was first enacted in 1947, and the National Wool Act of 1954 established direct payments for wool and mohair producers. The purpose was to encourage production of wool because it was considered an essential and strategic commodity.  According to the Congressional Research Service, no similar purpose was stated for the mohair program. While this program was phased out in 1995, ad hoc payments were provided in 1999 and 2000 and the program was reinstituted in 2002. Eliminating this program once again would save taxpayers approximately $1 million a year. (Also proposed as part of the RSC Sunset Caucus.)

Again, cutting any one these programs is not going to erase our debt or deficit in one shot.  But, it will begin to change the focus in Washington from spending to saving, from growing to cutting.  That’s why we need your help.

Please take just a few seconds to us in this effort. YouCut offers all Americans the ability to change the wasteful ways of Washington.  To be sure, 280,000 votes is a great number.  But to bring real change, rather than mere lip service, we need many more people to stand up and participate. The louder our voice, the harder it becomes for Speaker Pelosi to ignore.  Visit www.republicanwhip.house.gov/youcut to cast your vote now.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink are also allied with the anti-American governments of Venezuela and Cuba. She met with Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez in 2006 and has declared him a “sweetheart.” Jodie Evans traveled to Cuba in 2007 and worked with the Castro government to propagandize against the U.S.

In September 2008, just a couple of weeks after meeting Obama at a big money Hollywood fundraiser at the historic Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills, Jodie Evans met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York City. Afterward, Jodie Evans proclaimed him to be “really about peace and human rights and respecting justice.”

Jodie Evans told the Chronicle she delivered a petition to Obama last night from Afghan women urging him to not send more troops to Afghanistan to give women a place at the table for the reconciliation process. Jodie Evans didn’t say that the petition was actually Code Pink’s idea, and not the Afghan women’s initiative.

For the past four years, the highest profile Big Labor Boss was Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern.  Stern has deliberately parlayed his controlling style as that of a New Labor Boss, and he has painstakingly worked on the SEIU “purple brand.”  And yet, Stern and the SEIU union have failed to live up to the New Labor Boss identity that he claimed in his New York Times Magazine and CNN/Fortune Magazine articles.

Stern tried to separate himself from the herd of “old-styled” labor bosses in several ways, most noticeably with his dress.  He conscientiously wore his beloved SEIU purple with its slight pinkish hue.  Apparently, Stern is trying to replicate for his union what brown does for UPS.

Stern’s limitless purple attire led some to refer to him as the Lavender Labor Leader.  And recently, SEIU’s Anna Burger looked very chic in her purple suit as Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) grilled her about SEIU’s relationship with ACORN.

Whatever color of scarves, suits, or hats Andy Stern decides to wear, you cannot deny his influence with the White House, U.S. Congressional King Pins, the Democrat National Committee, and ACORN among others.  But, has Stern’s smash-mouth organizing and relationship to ACORN begun to turn SEIU’s purple into black and blue? You bet it has!

Clearly, ACORN’s partnerships with SEIU and other Big Labor outfits has begun to drag down SEIU’s image.  SEIU has decided, now that ACORN is damaged goods, to cut ties for now.  But, that will be very difficult because ACORN and ACORN’s training programs are totally interwoven into the purple fabric that makes up SEIU.  

From 2005 through 2008, SEIU spent $9 million on ACORN training programs and contracting out ACORN organizing services.  SEIU even hired ACORN founder Wade Rathke to command SEIU national organizing programs.   The ACORN listings below illustrate that the SEIU-ACORN relationship is much deeper than SEIU may want publicly known:

ACORN is not the only Brand Destroyer for SEIU

But, SEIU cannot blame its deteriorating image solely on it incestuous relationship with ACORN.  The “New Labor Boss” Stern has failed to live up to the image he created.

New Boss Stern is the same as Old Big Labor Bosses that Robert F. Kennedy described in his book, “The Enemy Within.”  Those Old Bosses would consolidate power and control over local unions by placing and threatening to place locals into trusteeships (Taking over operations of a local union and ousting of the elected union officials).  In addition, these bosses would cut deals with employers that allowed union members to be paid below contract rates.

Local SEIU officers  have claimed that Stern aggressively eliminates local autonomy via trusteeships and approved payoffs (e.g.An indictment alleged that in exchange  for payments, SEIU local president Danny Iverson’s resigned so that Stern associate Debra Timko would became president.); and, at least one SEIU contract allows an SEIU contracted employer to pay below contract rates (of course, workers are still forced to pay SEIU union dues and fees for its representation):

“In any instance where the Company signatory hereto desires to submit a bid to perform unit work at a building being serviced by a contractor not a party to a collective bargaining agreement with the union which would cover the work in question, it is agreed that the wage and fringe benefit provisions of this Agreement may be waived …”

Stern’s internal self-serving tactics have resulted in minimal public image damage because most of these actions primarily involve SEIU internal politics.  However, internal struggles combined with SEIU’s ruthless corporate campaigns and associations with groups like ACORN are causing even mainstream columnists like Kathleen Parker to question why anyone would want to be associated with SEIU.  She wrote:

While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they’ve hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they’ve never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions.

Since the 1990s, SEIU used ACORN-type tactics in so-called “corporate campaigns.”  As previously mentioned, ACORN trained SEIU organizers, and ACORN founder Wade Rathke spearheaded SEIU national organizing campaigns. 

During these corporate campaigns, SEIU coordinates personal attacks against employees, customers of targeted employers, and the employers.  SEIU organizers systematically increase their attacks with assistance from outside pressure groups in accordance with SEIU’s corporate campaign stratagem. 

Here is the real kicker in SEIU’s corporate campaign; SEIU’s harassment is not designed to force the employer into allowing employees a secret ballot union representational election, but SEIU pressures employers to sign away employees’ opportunity to have a secret ballot election.  That’s right; SEIU developed the corporate campaign to prevent employees from having a secret ballot election. 

SEIU, along with its partners ACORN, Justice for Janitors, Interfaith Worker Justice, and others stage disruptive demonstrations, place derogatory ads, hand out offensive flyers, send defamatory letters, and pressure politicians.  SEIU organizers have even used children to hand out nasty flyers as they trick-or-treat.  All of these actions are designed to irritate everyone in the community and hopefully focus the unrest on the employer, not SEIU.  And, in the end, it’s all about money – union dues extracted from workers for the privilege of having a job. 

All of SEIU’s in-your-face activities in numerous communities across the country has dramatically begun to weaken SEIU’s own brand. 

Here’s three quick true life SEIU corporate campaign sagas that span across America over two decades:

1. In the 1990’s, Sacramento’s Randy Schaber endured an SEIU four-year battering of his company and his employees.  SEIU’s attacks on Schaber included coordination with a Clinton Administration Big Labor appointee inside the U.S. Department of Labor that resulted in a Congressional investigation, headed by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, documenting SEIU’s corporate campaign and the removal of the SEIU insider. 

2. In Indianapolis, David A. Bego, author of The Devil at My Doorstep, had an SEIU organizer tell him, “we enjoy conversation, but we embrace confrontation,” shortly before SEIU goons began to ratchet up the pressure.  Bego’s book provides a concise description of his three-year SEIU ordeal, and details of hard-to-believe ACORN-modeled intimidation.  SEIU even had trick-or-treating children handout out offensive flyers in Bego’s and a customer’s neighborhood. 

3. Houston’s Brent Southwell story, as posted on BigGovernment.com by Bret Jacobson, repeats Schaber’s and Bego’s stories but with his own twist.  Southwell filed suit against SEIU claiming, among other things, that a top SEIU organizer “has stated directly to Professional Janitorial Services (PJS, Southwell’s company) that SEIU wants ‘to kill’ PJS.”  Certainly, this SEIU organizer was not concerned about the welfare of PJS employees.  The lawsuit against SEIU is currently ongoing.

Conclusion

To borrow a phrase from ACORN’s Wade Rathke, no matter how you shake and bake it, a nationwide campaign that embraces confrontation and irresponsible personal attacks will eventually stick to the SEIU brand.  Constantly filing unsubstantiated accusations with enforcement agencies and then using these SEIU-generated unsubstantiated claims to force politicians to act eventually hurts the credibility of the accuser. 

Remember the childhood story of the boy who cried wolf?

In the end, SEIU’s smash-mouth, no-holds-barred organizing, internal power struggles, and associations with the likes of ACORN have irrefutably begun to bring down Stern’s SEIU purple brand.

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